Unit Lines are from Movement Writing years ago

[K.J. Boal]

> > If we think about how little detail we write when writing English, it  > is amazing how much we understand anyway. Right now, I am not writing  > voice intonation, while writing English, or whether my voice remains  > at high pitch or low pitch at different times...if we had to write a  > unit line to show that my voice remains high for these five words,  > and low for the next five words, that feels more like research or  > perhaps music or dance, than a written language...Very true!  There are a lot of things we do in spoken language that don't actually need to be written; and the same goes for signed languages.  The big question is, what does need to be written and what can be left out? ;-) > Just my thoughts...> > As far as one Facial Expression lasting over several signs...most of  > the time now, there are Facial Circles over most signs anyway, so I  > would just write the same Facial Expression over all the signs that  > use it...that is easy and compact...the reader who is reading quickly  > will have no question what is happening with each sign...no referring  > back to the facial expression at the beginning of the Unit Line...> > Thoughts?> > Val ;-)> I've noticed the same thing about Facial Circles, and that's exactly what I've started doing; putting Expression into every Facial Circle I write.  (I didn't do that consistently in Sleeping Beauty, mostly because I was having trouble getting multiple Faces exactly on top of each other and I got tired of doing it over and over again.  But when I'm writing by hand, I put in something for the eyes and something for the mouth on pretty much everything.)  Using Unit Lines as quotation marks, though . . . I could actually see that being helpful.  After all, we have extended quotes in English all the time, and when we hit an "end-quote", we don't look back to the beginning.  I could advocate for writing Facial Expression in all (or most) of the Facial Circles even within a Unit Line, and only using them to mark direct quotations.  At the moment, I'm using lanes to mark direct quotes (i.e. roleshifting); but in natural signing, you usually move over before the quote starts, so shifting lanes late isn't a great solution.  Actually, Val, is there another way SignWriting uses to mark direct quotes?  I know I've seen something that looks like quotation marks in the SignText symbolset, but I never felt they'd be useful for vertical writing.  Just my thoughts.KJ
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